You're Flirting
by NoTimeTeen
Summary: Katniss and Johanna have too much time to kill at Thirteen. They are also impulsive and thoughtful, though. And, from time to time, they end up opening up to each other. Plotless Joniss rambling


"What do you mean? What is wrong with my hands?" I question.

"What do you mean what do I mean?" She huffs. "They're all... rough. Sandy. I feel like a tree scratched me."

"I just placed my hand on your forearm. What do you mean a tree scratched you?"

"Look at it!" She shows me her arm. There's nothing there.

"It's not my fault you're so frail."

"Oh, shut up."

"I don't know what you complain about. I bet your hands are just as bad."

"But I don't walk around grabbing people's arms and hurting them."

"I don't walk around—"

"So, is it just me, brainless?" She quirks her eyebrow. Her left one.

I hesitate for a second, unsure. "You're one to talk. Always tripping over when you're with me."

"You don't think I'd do that with just about anyone, do you?" The left side of her mouth pulls up in a smirk.

I stop her. "You're flirting, Johanna." Her face goes plain again, a slight frown wrinkling her forehead. Suddenly she looks uncomfortable. "You told me to tell you— "

"I know I did. Shut up, brainless!"

Her eyes roam the floor of our room for a second as she restlessly fingers her shoe. Her hair has grown considerably since she was rescued, spikily pointing in all directions. The skin that was once pale is now a very slight pink, though dotted here and there with scratches and bruises. My own skin must look the same. Training in the Block is supposed to be completely safe, but that doesn't mean you won't get hurt from time to time.

For a long while Buttercup's cries, grunts and meows overcome most other sounds that filter through our door. I try to keep my attention on my roommate, but her own discomfort crawls up on me. I should've stopped her immediately. If I have learned something about her in the last few days, it's that she hates feeling sorry for herself — unless it is to make others uncomfortable.

"Why do they call it 'Reflection', anyway?" Johanna explodes. I attempt to laugh but it comes more as a sort of nervous gasp. "I mean, what's to reflect about? The war? District 13 politics? They don't tell us a thing about either, damn it!"

"Maybe you're supposed to study all these military terms and techniques— "

"That we won't ever need. C'mon, brainless."

I close the book that's on my lap. "Okay," I say. "What would you do in reflection time?"

She huffs, tries to talk, then huffs again. "I don't know. What's to do in these stupid mine." My body tenses up slightly at the word. Too many painful memories, I suppose. The combination of events, stress and drugs seems to bring old nightmares back to the present. Every night. "Sorry, should've known." Her eyes roll, her shoulders shrug.

"What did you do?" She looks my way. "I mean, back at your District."

For a moment she stares incredulously at me. Was I kidding? Teasing? She decides I wasn't. "I don't even remember." Her body falls backward until she's laying on her back. "Been so long."

"Buttercup!" we hear Prim arrive across the hall. Johanna huffs and sighs a considerable amount of times before her voice makes me look at her again.

"Chopping down trees, blunting my axe..."

"Really?"

"Of course not, brainless." I can practically hear as her eyes roll. Probably smiling, she says, "It's like saying all you did with your free time was hitting rocks and pilling up coal."

I lay down, annoyed. It is very hard sleeping in the same room as Johanna Mason sometimes. I sigh quietly.

"Oh, calm down," she says. Maybe I sighed rather loudly. "I know you probably used to sing all the time or something, huh?"

I frown, my eyes on the ceiling. "No." I'm beginning to feel angry for some reason. Maybe living with her is affecting me. "I had to go out to hunt. Otherwise my family would've died," I growl harshly.

Out of the corner of my eye I see her lift her body with an elbow to look my way. I'm expecting an apology, but all she gives me is a sort of distant frown, as if something was in her mind. "That's right," she says. "You were a hunter." She nods, still frowning.

Her contradictory gestures make me lose my patience. I hate it how I never really know what she's thinking. She's too unpredictable. "So?"

As if she had forgotten I was there Johanna looks back at me. "Huh?" Her eyes remain distant. "Oh." She shakes her head and goes back to her laying position. "It's nothing. I just sometimes forget we're not really that different."

Johanna lets that sink in in silence. I feel like the conversation is over. The sound of her breathing lowers until it is barely perceptible.

I drown myself in thoughts. Go back to the arenas. To Rue and the part I played with Peeta. To hers and how she turned out to be such a ruthless murderer. And to the present, how both of us sort of yell each other out of our nightmares. She played a part as well. My eyebrows rise slightly. Indeed, I think, maybe we're not that different.

"You know what I hated the most after I went out of the arena?" she whispers loudly, her voice solidifying until she ends up talking at a normal volume. "I mean, besides the fact I had to kill and act crazier than I am. The hands. My skin."

I nod — then roll my eyes at myself and hum in understanding. I do understand. How they smoothed me out even before I went in the arena. I used to have a scar on both knees from the time a branch had broken under my weight fifteen feet above the ground and I'd fallen down. I landed on my feet, then fell forward on my face and my knees had hit a rock. My pants were useless after that and even holding myself up on a tree made my scratched hands burn. It took me two hours to get home — empty handed — and upon my arrival I'd been surprised to see my mother stand up almost automatically at the sight of me to start treating my legs and hands. The next day I felt well enough to go hunting again and my mother felt well enough to go back to her catatonic state. It might not seem like the nicest of experiences, but after that day I always think twice before trusting a branch — or a tree, for that matter — with holding me up.

I watch Johanna move her hands over her face and turn them this way and that. "I felt like a sort of baby-skinned mutt. Nothing to show what I'd done. How many I had killed. Not even the slightest trace of the blood that fell on me."

"Yeah," I say. "No trace of Clove's knife or of the tracker jacker stings."

Johanna chuckles. She says, her tone lighter, "It really sucked what happened to you guys." I turn my face on the pillow to see the side of her face. "Not that I like you or anything, but... Couple of victors as you were, I always thought they'd find some other uses for you. Not like with most of us. Not like with Finnick. I thought you'd be able to be happy."

I stare back at the ceiling. Wondering. Would I have been happy? The story of the star-crossed lovers would have forced me to stay with Peeta. It already has. Would I have chosen differently had things been different? I think of Gale, of how he loves hanging around Special Defense and president Coin, of our hypocritical kisses at District 2. Of Peeta and how of all the kisses we've shared I've only ever felt anything at all twice.

"Or maybe not happy," she laughs after a second. "But at least not... not like us... You know?" She turns to me with a frown. I nod.

Another minute of loud passers-by from outside fills the room.

"Do you really love either of them?" Johanna sounds adamant not to believe whatever I say to her when she speaks. That makes me smile.

"Who?"

"Those dudes," she says.

"Peeta and Gale?" She hums in confirmation. I sigh heavily. "Of course I do... I guess." I look at her and her eyebrow is quirked again. Her left one. "I mean, how could I not?" I hesitate. "You know?"

For some reason she flicks her tongue out of her mouth and runs it over her upper teeth, then says, amused, "They both love you."

"Exactly." I feel all my frustrations battling to emerge. "What kind of person would not know what to feel with that?"

She shrugs. "Love is weird."

I am surprised by how well her ambiguous definition seems to fit with the impression I have.

"Have you ever felt anything at all?" she asks. "Because a couple of times there, in your first arena, you almost looked disgusted at having to kiss Peeta."

I feel myself blush, laughing nervously. How bizarre a situation this is, I allow myself to think. "I don't know," I answer. "What are you supposed to feel when someone kisses you? I've never been able to just kiss someone. There's always some outside reason." I speak unconsciously, not thinking how Johanna of all people is the one to whom I'm talking about my love life. "I kiss Peeta because we're supposed to be a couple. I kiss Gale because everybody who knew me expected me to marry him eventually, or to forget I'm supposed to love Peeta even though he now hates me. And every time I kiss either of them is like I'm testing the waters, like I'm expecting to feel something that will let me know which of them I should choose. Something out of this world."

"Listen to you go at it," Johanna mocks. She mimics my voice, "'Which of them I should choose'. Some of us can't actually choose, brainless, and you don't even want to."

I laugh. "You're free to go after Gale if you want to," I say. "I won't mind."

"But I would," she whispers as if to herself, then says louder, "Why would I want to?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why would I like him? He's so... shallow."

"Oh?"

"Look at him, he goes after you because of what you said." Johanna sounds annoyed. It unsettles me. "Just because he can't think of someone better to love. And Peeta — Damn, let's not start on him. He's so innocent he thinks by loving you until he dies you'll love him back. It's almost cruel."

For a moment I ponder over that. Who knew her opinions about us were so solid?

"And," I hesitate. She hums inquisitively. I go once more, "And what do you think of me?"

I feel a change coming to us, to her and I. To how we see the other. "You're just you," she says shortly. "You're who you are. Confused, troubled. Like me. Just a girl who got chosen and had to make decisions. You just had a more difficult time at going against the odds. Way braver than I for choosing to remain yourself rather than kill Peeta."

"Wow," I whisper.

"You know." Her face turns to me and she smirks leftward as her eyebrow — her left one — lifts. "You and I, we're really not so different." She stands up slowly, almost impractically slowly. Her eyes stay on my face, her smirk solid on her lips, her eyebrow as if held up there by an invisible string. She comes over and sits on my bed next to my stomach. Then she leans onto me, her face above mine. "Maybe I could show you how a kiss is supposed to feel."

"Johanna." I try to hide the nervousness in my voice or at least the apparent stiffness of my limbs. I fail miserably. "You're flirting."

Her head shakes. "Am not."

"Why tell me to warn you, then, if you won't listen?" My voice is increasingly nervous and desperate. I'm about to push her off me when she speaks.

"I told you I couldn't help flirting sometimes since I'm used to hanging out with guys." I nod. "I lied."

There's a gulping sound that echoes all around the room, and someone seems to be pounding rhythmically at the door, and that's all I seem to hear. A second later I realize the sounds are coming out of me. My throat and my heart.

"What's going on, Johanna?" I feel her breath on my neck. My face turns sideways away from her. What has come over her?

She chuckles throatily against my ear.

A nervous laugh disguises poorly the relieved sigh I release when she sits back, putting distance between us again. For a second a frown adorns her features, Seemingly she's surprised. Then a teasing expression takes over, though it feels rather false.

"I'm just playing with you, brainless," she laughs.

We stay on the bed for a very long time. Half an hour, I'd say. Uncomfortable to no extent. I stare at the ceiling while she stares at her hands on her lap. I try not to focus on that last unstable urge to which she seemed to almost yield, deciding instead to think about what she said about me and Peeta and Gale and my situation involving them.

Finally, I whisper, "Did you mean all that? About me?"

She looks at me hesitantly. She shrugs. "I guess."

"I had no idea."

"Why would you?" Resentment is clear in her voice.

I frown. "I don't know. We live together, after all."

Johanna huffs. "And look how close we're becoming," she says sarcastically.

I think my next question thoroughly, afraid of how she'll take it or how she'll answer. "What did you mean you lied?"

She blinks repeatedly. "Don't know." Her shoulders rise and fall in a deep sigh.

"And about kissing me?"

Now is her turn to frown. "I didn't say anything about kissing you."

"You implied you wanted to."

"Is that enough for you? No wonder you're so troubled about people loving you..."

"Johanna," I say firmly.

Johanna grunts loudly. "C'mon, brainless." Her voice lowers. "You can't tell me you haven't thought about it." I feel my eyebrows lift in surprise. A little disbelief, too. "Not me — I mean about kissing a girl or whatever. Someone else besides those stupid lovebirds you have on your tail."

She's right, I can't. I think for a moment of Madge and the quiet days out in the woods, of Johanna herself naked at the Training Center or here in Thirteen where we've seen each other naked more than it should be allowed.

"It's not like you have a lot of chances," Johanna says. "You, I mean. You. Imagine me. Think I wouldn't enjoy a nice cozy night with someone who's at least a bit close to me?"

She huffs an infinite number of times as she crosses the space between our beds. Then lays looking at the wall, her back to me.

I sit there, astonished.

After what feels like an hour I make up my mind and move. I feel my fingers tremble nervously, my knees twitching slightly under my weight. She and I, we're not really that different. We're both more than it looks. She's more than the soul-less killer she pretended to be and I'm more than the empty little girl I pretended to be.

I lay on her bed behind her and scoot myself forward until my arm can circle her waist. Her body stiffens. Then, as if she had realized I wasn't planning on slitting her throat, she relaxes against me and pushes her body backward slowly.

She sighs.

"About that kiss—"

"Johanna," I stop her. "You're flirting."

She curses.

"We'll talk," I hear myself whisper. Nervousness paralyzes me, but I feel myself smile.


End file.
